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Condor Ferries has today published its fleet maintenance programme through to the end of 2017 and the contingency plans which it will put in place when its ships are undergoing major maintenance works or are unexpectedly out of service.

The fleet maintenance plan contains the scheduled dry dock and key maintenance periods for other works through to the end of 2017.

The contingency plans include details of how the rest of Condor’s fleet, and a charter ship, will be utilised when there is planned maintenance or unexpected disruption.This includes options such as running extra sailings and operating Liberation or Rapide on a through UK-Channel Islands-France service.

The maintenance programme also includes additional docks for the conventional ferries, Commodore Clipper and Commodore Goodwill.The ferries were due to have pollution-reducing scrubbers fitted during their September and October dry dock periods however, problems with suppliers meant that the scrubbers could not be fitted as scheduled.Clipper will return to dock on 4 November and will be back in service by 14 December.The dates for Commodore Goodwill’s additional dock are still to be confirmed.

Captain Fran Collins commented:

“We have always planned our fleet maintenance a long way in advance, however this is the first time that we have made the information publicly available in this way.We hope that this will help to build confidence in the comprehensive and complex contingency planning which we put into place when ships are out of service. We also hope that sharing this information will allow our customers, and the wider Islands communities, to plan for the future.”

She added: “We are obviously extremely disappointed that the scrubbers, which are required to meet new EU Regulations on sulphur emissions, could not be fitted as planned during our conventional ferries’ routine dry dock periods.We appointed world-leading professional firms to project-manage the overall programme of works and supply the specialist materials and key components.However, these are major, complex engineering installations unique to each ship.

"We have worked hard with our suppliers, and with the agreement of the States of Jersey and Guernsey, to reschedule the installation for Clipper at a time when passenger numbers are relatively low, and which will allow her to be back in service before families and friends start travelling for Christmas.We have chartered MV Arrow for an additional 5 weeks to ensure we maintain a seamless freight supply.I’d like to apologise to our customers for the inconvenience which the additional dock may cause.Our customer service team is already contacting customers who were booked to travel on Clipper in November and early December.They will be offered a refund or alternative travel and, to help minimise the disruption, we will be running extra sailings of Condor Liberation on Wednesdays during this period.”